Overview

FEATURING:  Year-Round R1-HBCU Collaborative Research Pods

Collaborative R1-HBCU research pods are comprised of an R1 faculty member working together with an HBCU team comprised of one research faculty member, 2 MS level and 2-4 undergraduate students.  Unlike traditional REU summer experiences, these A4RC pod members participate together in year-round research projects at the HBCU and the students then go as a team to the R1 university in the summer for the REU experience. There they build upon the research agenda they developed during the academic year.  Upon their return to the home campus, the work continues and the goal is a team publication and continued research.

During the academic year, HBCU undergraduate and MS level students participate in a distance Research Methods course that is then linked to their research projects.   Students and faculty visit each other’s campuses in the Spring and the undergrads in the pods are fully-funded for summer residential research experiences at the research institutions to continue working on the project with the R1 faculty mentor.  This program augments existing programs at the partner institutions: Colorado ’s Summer Multicultural Access to Research Training (SMART) Program , Georgia Tech’s Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering (SURE) Program, and Virginia Tech’s Research Experience for Undergrads in Human-Computer Interaction (REU-HCI) Program.  

 
Encouraging collaboration through researcher visits

Face-to-face interactions help foster collaborations among participating members.  Four well-attended mini-conferences have brought together our alliance team.  Researcher visits between faculty at HBCU schools and faculty at research institutions have highlighted the unique strengths of each.  The visits help faculty understand how to best identify students who are well-suited for graduate work at partner institutions.   Several papers and funding proposals are in the pipeline because of these events, with many more planned.

 
Designing a repository for course outreach materials

Hands-on experiences can excite students and faculty alike about the possibilities of a research career.  Our alliance is teaching a distance learning Research Methods course and our web site will be featuring a repository of projects, homeworks, and in-class activities that highlight research-related resources at our research institutions.  Items from this repository can be adopted for use in various classes, providing a hands-on experience that can point students toward a research career.

 
Scaling and sustaining through evaluation of impact

Our program includes an integrated evaluation plan—led by Lecia Barker and the University of Colorado ’s Alliance for Technology, Learning, and Society (ATLAS) Institute—aimed at not only improving implementation, but also documenting and carefully describing results toward identifying the most effective practices.  This careful documentation of processes and outcomes makes possible future adoption and adaptation by a broader audience.